By Kaley Kite, partner relations marketing specialist
The easiest way to describe B2B behavioral marketing (or “behavioral targeting”) is with a Web advertising example. Let’s say you’re a law firm and you need a new customer relationship management (CRM) system to keep track of all of your customers.
What is the first thing you’re going to do?
You’re probably going to do some research online.
Virtually all B2B buying decisions start online:
- AdWeek: Eighty-one percent of shoppers conduct online research before making a purchase. Sixty percent of them will start by using a search engine.
- Google: Seventy-one percent of B2B researchers start with generic search terms. This means they use unbranded terms, like “CRM systems for law firms” rather than “ABC Corporation Law Firm CRM.”
As a B2B buyer you’re probably going to go to sites like Google and type in a variety of search terms. After doing some searches, you’ll then start to read articles and review sites on CRM systems. Then, you’ll probably spend a couple of hours reading and researching.
The whole time you are doing this, your activity is being tracked.
When you go to sites that have titles and words like “CRM systems,” all of that data is being collected and sent to entities that will buy it. This information is used to help craft behavioral marketing strategies.
A B2B marketer who is selling CRM systems to law firms would be interested in you because you are exhibiting buying behavior. Ideally, their entire online marketing and advertising campaigns would be oriented toward someone like you.
Why? Let’s define buying behavior. Buying behaviors are online indicators that a user is actively seeking a product or service. In order to create the best behavioral marketing campaigns for B2B buyers, advertisers must pay attention to whether or not the user is actually indicating buying behavior. A key element to this is timing. A person who has exhibited a particular buying behavior within the past 30 days is much more relevant than someone who has searched “Law Firm CRM Systems” six months ago.
If you search for relevant keywords, visit relevant sites and engage relevant content, relevant B2B marketers are going to want to put their relevant ad directly in front of you, online.
That’s what behavioral marketing does — in a nutshell. It puts an ad in front of people who are actively searching for the advertiser’s products and services, using keywords and visiting relevant websites. It is targeted marketing that speaks to a specific audience.
Behavioral marketing takes the mystery out of how to advertise to and locate B2B buyers, online.
One of the many things we do here at MultiView is B2B behavioral marketing. We communicate with people that are actively seeking a specific B2B marketer’s products and services.
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